He rejected his wife and twin daughters as bad luck… 20 years later, THIS happened
He was a respected man in his community. Ena wasn’t poor; he was a carpenter and built beds, wardrobes, and roof frames for the people of Yumiki and the surrounding villages. People respected him and knew him throughout the village. His wife, Adogo, was a quiet and respectful woman, always silent, who never said an inappropriate word. Everyone thought she would bring peace to Ena’s home, but that peace never came in the way they all expected.
The first three years of marriage were difficult. Adogo suffered two miscarriages, the first at three months and the second with even more serious consequences. During the second miscarriage, Adogo nearly bled to death and was unable to walk properly for weeks. Namecha’s mother, Mama Aima, began to look at Adogo differently. She spoke louder at home, especially when Adogo was around. “Some women bring bad luck with them,” Mama Aima would say.
At first, Namecha tried to defend his wife. He told his mother it wasn’t Adogo’s fault, but over time, he himself began to change. He distanced himself from her, stopped cuddling her at night, and the pressure to have a child, especially a son, began to consume him. Adogo noticed, and the distance between them grew. Every night, she prayed, not only for a child, but also pleading not to feel like a stranger in her own home.
When the fourth year of marriage arrived, Adogo became pregnant again. This time she didn’t tell anyone until she was five months along; only Namecha knew. She was afraid everything would go wrong again, so she avoided the market and spent most of her time at home. She followed all the advice of the local nurse: no herbs, no stress, and slow movements. When the ninth month arrived, Adogo gave birth to three beautiful girls. The first came out crying loudly, the second smaller but breathing well, and the third arrived with more difficulty, but she also survived.
Adogo wasn’t bothered by the fact that there were three girls. What mattered was that all three were alive. However, when Namecha learned that they were all girls, her face changed. “Three girls,” she said with a disappointed expression. Without another word, she walked away. Adogo hoped he would see them, hold them in his arms, but instead, it was Mama Aima who entered the room. She didn’t even look at the girls. She simply said, “Three girls. In the end…”
That night, Namecha didn’t go near Adogo or her daughters. She didn’t ask to hold any of them, nor did she even look at Adogo. The next day, she didn’t come home early. She began to distance herself more and more, and finally, she moved to a separate room. A few days later, she told Adogo to leave her house with the girls. “Take your daughters and go back to where you came from,” she ordered coldly. Adogo, desperate, begged, cried, and knelt before her mother-in-law, but Mama Aima only looked at her with contempt and said, “Do you think you’re the first woman to be thrown out? You brought this on yourself.”
Under the scorching sun, Adogo, carrying her three daughters, walked to her father’s house, only to discover he had died the previous year. Her brothers told her they had no room for a woman with three mouths to feed. With no other option, Adogo took refuge in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Yumiki, where she began begging for food at the market, working as a cleaner at schools, and washing clothes for neighbors. Little by little, with much effort and sacrifice, she raised her daughters: Anyi, Anwuli, and Amina.
Every night, Adogo taught them to read by candlelight, braided their hair with trembling hands, and hugged them tightly whenever the world made them feel unwelcome. He told them again and again, “You are not bad luck. You are my blessings.”
The girls grew up strong, intelligent, and beautiful. Anyi loved books and dreamed of becoming a writer. Anwuli sang and danced with such a captivating voice that she always amazed everyone. Amina, the quietest and most thoughtful, said she wanted to be a doctor because she remembered how difficult it was for her mother to earn money for medicine. So, when the three of them turned twenty, they worked tirelessly to earn scholarships, shined shoes, braided hair, tutored children, and sold sweets until they finally managed to get ahead.
The day Amina graduated from medical school, she cried. Not because she was afraid, but because she thought about all her mother’s sacrifices, every time she went hungry so they could eat, every time she walked barefoot so they could study. On her first day at the hospital, Amina walked into the emergency room and saw an elderly man on a gurney, struggling to breathe. She rushed to his side, performed CPR, and stabilized him as best she could. But when she looked up and saw the man’s face, something in her heart stopped her. There was something painfully familiar. Although he didn’t recognize her, Amina did. It was Namecha, her father, the man who had rejected them twenty years ago.
Amina decided to keep the secret. She didn’t tell the nurses, her supervisor, or even her sisters, who called her every night to pray together. She remembered what her mother always told her: “God sees everything, even when we don’t understand.” So, Amina continued working. Day after day, she checked her father’s vital signs, changed his IV, and helped him get up. He never recognized her. Yet, the past burned in her heart.
One day, after several days of caring for him, a woman with a headscarf entered the room. When Amina saw her, her heart leapt. The woman dropped a basket of oranges to the floor. Amina looked at her and whispered, “Mama?” The woman looked at her and burst into tears. It was Adogo, her mother.
They both stood still, gazing at each other in a silence heavy with emotion, until the woman burst into tears. Adogo had come to the hospital to see a sick neighbor, and upon seeing Namecha’s name on the door, couldn’t help but peek inside. Finding her daughter in the room, they stared at each other for a long moment. Namecha, confused, looked at them with eyes filled with guilt and regret.
“Look, you look just like her,” Namecha murmured. And at that moment, Adogo approached, walked to the foot of the bed, and said gently, “She must look like me. She’s your daughter.”
Tears began to well up in Namecha’s eyes. He wasn’t crying from physical pain, but from the weight of his decisions. Twenty years of regret were suffocating him. At last, the truth had come to light, and guilt overwhelmed him.
Amina looked at her father and whispered, her heart heavy with sadness, “We didn’t need you to know, Dad. We just needed you to care.”
In that small room, the heart monitor beeped softly. Fallen oranges lay on the floor. Three people stood motionless, trapped in a story that had finally come full circle. And for the first time in her life, Namecha wept not from pain, but from the profound regret of lost years, of decisions that could never be undone.